While Dragon Age 2 did suck in every area except the upgraded combat (and that was more of a lateral shift), there is absolutely no reason to do anything except say how much it sucks. Death threats and anything like it do nothing except make the rest of us look bad.

Pocket Ninja:I've never played this game and doubt I ever will. But were the changes made really so utterly profound that they could destroy some troglodyte's enjoyment of it?

If it had been a standalone game with nothing preceeding it, it would've been fine. What they did was take a fantastic first installment, remove everything about it that made it fantastic, and slap a 2 on it.

It was a rush job by BioWare because they weren't counting on how successful the first one would be.

"Jennifer Hepler left BioWare this week to begin work on a book about narrative design and do some freelance work. Her most recent job title was senior writer on Dragon Age: Inquisition. But it was Dragon Age 2 that led to the death threats, the threats against her family and children and the harassment.

When asked if the harassment led to her depature, Hepler told Polygon "No, leaving Bioware was for family reasons. I am going to be working on a text book on narrative design among other game-related freelance projects."

After Dragon Age 2 came out in 2011, Hepler told Polygon, many of the people involved in the game's development received angry emails, abusive forum posts and petitions calling for them to be fired. About that time, someone dug up an old interview Hepler participated in six years earlier. In the interview Hepler mentioned that her least favorite part of working in the game industry was playing through games and combat. Some of the interview was put in the official forums as evidence that Hepler was to blame for changes in the game's combat. The forum post was removed and Hepler went on maternity leave. But then the following February someone created a forum post resurfacing the interview and called Hepler the "cancer" that was destroying BioWare.

"I had opened a Twitter account a few weeks before that, and this poster or others quickly found me there and began sending threatening messages," she said. "I shut my account down without reading them, so I'm not certain what they said, but other people have told me they were quite vile."

The forum post and Hepler's Weeners on Twitter, ignited a firestorm of hatred and harassment that included emailed death threats and threats against her children.

"I did my best to avoid actually reading any of it, so I'm not quite certain how bad it got," Hepler said. "I was shown a sample of the forum posts by EA security and it included graphic threats to kill my children on their way out of school to show them that they should have been aborted at birth rather than have to have me as a mother."

Hepler also received harassing phone calls and threats on the BioWare Social Network.

The impact though, she said, was mostly positive.

"The outpouring of support I received - large amounts from female and gay fans - was incredibly heartening," she said. "I got hundreds of messages from people who had been deeply moved by characters and scenes that I wrote and who had made positive changes in their real lives because of it. Without the negativity, I'm not sure that I would ever have heard from all of these people confirming that there is a need for characters that tackle touchy social issues, for characters who are untraditional or even unlikeable. It has definitely strengthened my desire to continue to make games that strive for inclusivity and that use fiction and fantasy to explore difficult, uncomfortable real-world issues."

scottydoesntknow: What they did was take a fantastic first installment, remove everything about it that made it fantastic, and slap a 2 on it.

Sort of like when Star Trek took Captain James Tiberius Kirk and replaced him with some bald Frenchman who spoke with an English accent. I bet Bioware could have gotten away with it, if they called it "Dragon Age: The Next Generation", instead of "Dragon Age 2".

I have never felt the urge to kill someone's children.I have never felt the urge to threaten to kill someone's children.I have never even felt the urge to joke about threatening to kill someone's children.

What the fark is wrong with you people? Red Sox fans are like Jane Austen characters compared to you.

scottydoesntknow:Pocket Ninja: I've never played this game and doubt I ever will. But were the changes made really so utterly profound that they could destroy some troglodyte's enjoyment of it?

If it had been a standalone game with nothing preceeding it, it would've been fine. What they did was take a fantastic first installment, remove everything about it that made it fantastic, and slap a 2 on it.

It was a rush job by BioWare because they weren't counting on how successful the first one would be.

I know you aren't defending the people who made threats, but to those people, how in the fark can that be justification for something that horrible? Just don't buy anymore of their games.

Pretty much why the only game I play now is Flight Simulator. I suspect the average age of the community is mid-40's, there are no death threats when a plane doesn't fly exactly like it's supposed to, and the only thing idiots do online is crash while screaming into their microphones.

Meanwhile, I still remember the days of Battlefield 2, where you were either a total noob or a cheat. There were no inbetweens.

I guess Hollywood actors/screenwriter also get this kind of abuse as well? But seriously, WTF is wrong with people. My daughter wants to go into video game creation when she grows up, this kind of shiat worries me.

I'm not a fan of some of Totilo's articles, but the write up he did for Polygon that Metro took most of their article from is much longer and far better. It includes how the old head of Xbox Live enforcement would get 'swatted' and other tales from people who have received similar threats along with reasons why some people take it to far.

picturescrazy:scottydoesntknow: Pocket Ninja: I've never played this game and doubt I ever will. But were the changes made really so utterly profound that they could destroy some troglodyte's enjoyment of it?

If it had been a standalone game with nothing preceeding it, it would've been fine. What they did was take a fantastic first installment, remove everything about it that made it fantastic, and slap a 2 on it.

It was a rush job by BioWare because they weren't counting on how successful the first one would be.

I know you aren't defending the people who made threats, but to those people, how in the fark can that be justification for something that horrible? Just don't buy anymore of their games.

It isn't. There's absolutely no excuse. It's pretty much like the Stephen King book Misery, except instead of a crazy lady who cuts you off from the outside world so they can't see what she's doing, it's anonymity in the outside world that makes you a dick.

Game forums are den of pure, unapologetic stupid. If you think Fark politics threads get bad, allow me to point you to Youtube comments and, from there, allow me to point you to video game forums. When you get a group of anonymous people together in a competitive environment like that the whole thing just goes to complete shiat. It's like every single frustration the people had is brought out in this anonymous setting and the racism and homophobia and general insults just flow like a river. It's insane. Video game players are just awful when they get together.

The writing (and combat system) of DA2 were the only good parts. I've seen references to how she "ruined" the game. But wasn't the game ruined by its being rushed, which led to repeated environments 9000 times over?

Am I missing something as to what "writing" entails? The ending was fantastic and I did not see it coming at all, especially after playing DA:Awakening.

/obviously, these people are the worst, no matter what Hepler did or didn't do.

Shame about all that though I can't imagine taking the threats of angry nerds serious enough to warrant quitting her job. I would imagine it was less the threats and more her desire to not out up with the negativity of the Internet culture.

I actually liked the direction DA2 was taking combat and for a first step it wasn't great but was enjoyable. I also liked the plot of DA2 a lot more than DA1s magical black dragon adventure. I honestly think most of the backlash was just how rushed the games world was considering it reused every map five times over.

Judging by the title of DA3 it looks like the events of DA2 will play strongly in it and I look forward to playing but not paying for day 1 DLC.

Pocket Ninja:I've never played this game and doubt I ever will. But were the changes made really so utterly profound that they could destroy some troglodyte's enjoyment of it?

You should have seen the racist vileness that was spewed when basement-dwellers heard the main character in GTA: San Andreas was going to be black.

skozlaw:HotIgneous Intruder: //And why is nobody being arrested for these threats? Hmmm?

Because the resources required to hunt down some pimple-faced fatass hiding in his parent's basement aren't justified?

Things like this make me seriously reconsider my opposition to game companies that want people to use their real names, though.

Death threat over the internet means most likely death threat across state lines.

18 USC § 875 - Interstate communications(c) Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of another, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

And given the caliber of person we are most likely talking to here, tracking them probably isn't all that hard.

Blizzard tried doing that to cut back on Forum/Game douchebaggery with their Real ID plan.

The problem with that being that it would make internet stalking far too easy for a game community with a sizable chunk of mentally and emotionally unstable players. Female toons already get harassed and propositioned on WoW relentlessly; knowing that the player is really a woman and having a link to her real identity would have lead to some horrifying situations.

Don't believe me? Go spend an hour in Goldshire on Moon Guard or another RP server listening to the general chat and yells.

The simplest solution would be to actually enforce the conduct rules and start wielding the banhammers, but they don't want to loose half their subscriber base through banning.

I think the fact that she castrated Dragon Age II was her fault why we can't have nice things.

It's highly unlikely that one person, especially one of the writers, was involved in the game design decisions or in any way made the final approval one game mechanics. Issues with the quality or lack of it would likely be the responsibility of the creative director(s) or possibly resulted from publisher influence/interference.

Fans harassing someone doesn't help actually communicate problems people had with the game, and makes such complaints easier to write off.

zarberg:BioWare could run over my dog and I'd forgive them because they did what I thought was impossible with KotOR:

Restored my faith in Star Wars after eps I-III

Same here. The problem though is that the BioWare of KoTOR and Mass Effect 1&2 is no longer alive. BW now is just EA milking the corpse and rushing out games they have no intention of putting any sort of quality or development into. See: Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 3, The Old Republic. The cash and development that went into TOR was mostly spent by BW before the full buyout by EA; once that happened, ship it ASAP and don't worry about support or world-building.

scottydoesntknow:While Dragon Age 2 did suck in every area except the upgraded combat (and that was more of a lateral shift), there is absolutely no reason to do anything except say how much it sucks. Death threats and anything like it do nothing except make the rest of us look bad.

/F*cking kids

And apparently make the lead writer quit. Can't say I'm sorry, the storytelling in Dragon Age II seriously sucked ass.

scottydoesntknow:Meh, to me they (mostly) redeemed themselves with the Citadel DLC. It was the ending everyone wanted, but not the ending they could deliver with the original product.

It wasn't the one I wanted. I loved the Citadel DLC, but the actual ending ignored the entire premise of the first game in the franchise. I did get upset about the ending, even more so that I really should have. Perhaps it was because I so enjoyed the first two games, and hell, I really really liked ME3 up until the ending (and I also really like the DLC, even the less popular ones like Omega, since I had also read through the comic books related to that DLC, before the DLC was ever even announced)

Never once, however, did I ever feel the need to threaten anyone at all about the ending, it just never occurred to me that it would A) get any sort of positive change; B) seem like something a decent human being should ever do, especially for some so trivial as a piece of entertainment (that kept me very entertained) or C) open a meaningful dialog with the writers so that they would understand why I was upset about the ending and what kind of details people in the community such as myself like in these stories, and what we didn't

Threatening people, their families, their friends, it just makes no sense at all. It'll more likely cause the end of a beloved franchise than have a positive effect of future iterations

/Oh, and if you are wondering what the pet peeve detail was that had me upset, it was that there was an AI that controlled all the Reapers living on the Citadel itself, yet was incapable of noticing that some Protheans had gotten onto the Citadel after their extinction event and messed with the Keepers so that the Citadel Relay would not open up and let the Reapers through. This AI was also seemingly incapable of signaling the Reapers that it was once again time to harvest life, and so Sovereign was left as a Vanguard, that could interface with the Citadel to open the Relay, whereas the AI, once again, was seemingly incapable of doing so//I wanted about 2 lines of dialog between the AI and Shep giving an explanation, like "I can watch, but am no longer capable of interfacing with the Reapers, and much of the station"///I'm not bitter. It was a good game, worth the money and time I put into it

Nemo's Brother:/This is pretty typical PC Gamer behavior though. It is why it will always be inferior: the gamers themselves.

Yes, being passionate and vocal about the entertainment you enjoy (as though the internet doesn't allow people to bring down the force of the world on anyone, regardless of what they did to deserve) makes PC gaming "inferior".

JesusJuice:scottydoesntknow: While Dragon Age 2 did suck in every area except the upgraded combat (and that was more of a lateral shift), there is absolutely no reason to do anything except say how much it sucks. Death threats and anything like it do nothing except make the rest of us look bad.

/F*cking kids

And apparently make the lead writer quit. Can't say I'm sorry, the storytelling in Dragon Age II seriously sucked ass.

I honestly don't get that criticism. DA1 has you being basically a Nights Watch and you hunt down a big black mean dragon. It wasn't exactly a strong fantasy game when it came to the writing. DA2 has you centred around a city broiling over with civil war between mages and the temple and fleshes out the Qunari instead of DA1's large grey angry humans.

DA1 was fine as a first foray into world building but the story of DA2 was a lot richer than the warmed over plot of DA1.

the_sidewinder:/Oh, and if you are wondering what the pet peeve detail was that had me upset, it was that there was an AI that controlled all the Reapers living on the Citadel itself, yet was incapable of noticing that some Protheans had gotten onto the Citadel after their extinction event and messed with the Keepers so that the Citadel Relay would not open up and let the Reapers through. This AI was also seemingly incapable of signaling the Reapers that it was once again time to harvest life, and so Sovereign was left as a Vanguard, that could interface with the Citadel to open the Relay, whereas the AI, once again, was seemingly incapable of doing so//I wanted about 2 lines of dialog between the AI and Shep giving an explanation, like "I can watch, but am no longer capable of interfacing with the Reapers, and much of the station"///I'm not bitter. It was a good game, worth the money and time I put into it

Agreed 100%, that was my main complaint too. It basically negated Sovereign's whole motivation in the first game. Inserting a simple dialogue like "The Protheans shut down my signal" or something like that would've rectified it.

Plus I would've preferred a Harbinger hologram over the starchild. Harbinger was criminally underused in the 3rd one.

ArcadianRefugee:And given the caliber of person we are most likely talking to here, tracking them probably isn't all that hard.

Still costs considerable time and money for both law enforcement and the company. Discovery ain't cheap even when you're just tracking some pizza-faced loser.

It would be interesting to see a DA start making some examples though. Watching the blubbering idiots screaming and crying for their mommies as they're dragged into the light by a state detective would be hilarious.

FrancoFile:I have never felt the urge to kill someone's children.I have never felt the urge to threaten to kill someone's children.I have never even felt the urge to joke about threatening to kill someone's children.

What the fark is wrong with you people? Red Sox fans are like Jane Austen characters compared to you.

DenisBergkamp:JesusJuice: scottydoesntknow: While Dragon Age 2 did suck in every area except the upgraded combat (and that was more of a lateral shift), there is absolutely no reason to do anything except say how much it sucks. Death threats and anything like it do nothing except make the rest of us look bad.

/F*cking kids

And apparently make the lead writer quit. Can't say I'm sorry, the storytelling in Dragon Age II seriously sucked ass.

I honestly don't get that criticism. DA1 has you being basically a Nights Watch and you hunt down a big black mean dragon. It wasn't exactly a strong fantasy game when it came to the writing. DA2 has you centred around a city broiling over with civil war between mages and the temple and fleshes out the Qunari instead of DA1's large grey angry humans.

DA1 was fine as a first foray into world building but the story of DA2 was a lot richer than the warmed over plot of DA1.

My biggest complaint with DA2 was it was a story that had already been told and you were just along for the ride. In DA1, you actually shape the countryside. You make choices that are reflected in the end game. You can choose kings of whole cities and you could piss off your companions enough that they would actually try to kill you (like pissing on the Ashes of Andraste would cause Leliana to fight you).

In DA2, you were on rails. You couldn't piss off your companions (just up the "rivalry"), every choice you made didn't matter as the game would railroad you into it. Side with the Chantry? Doesn't matter as you still have to fight their leader. Side with the mages? Doesn't matter as the mage leader goes crazy anyway and you have to fight him. Don't want to help Anders get the supplies for his Chantry bomb? Doesn't matter as he got the supplies anyway and still blew it up.

Add in the shoddy past-save implementation from Origins (I killed you Zevran, why are you making an appearance here?) and the re-used environments and it was just not fun.

I played through Origins at least 3-4 times just to experience different choices. I never made it through a second run of DA2.

Oh, and just to add into the discussion: It's not that video game players are whiny, outraged, immature, entitled elitists. It's that they're one of the few demographics with an actual farking backbone. The problem is that the megapublishers wanted this kind of irrational behavior--buying games before the reviews come out, buying them in droves for sixty bucks, working them into a frenzy for every pedantic detail--and they're now mad that they have to deal with irrational behavior that's a detriment to their business. Don't throw the gator meat and then biatch the gator came after you.

Well, Hepler is a shiatty writer and BioWare will only be improved by her departure, but the harassment and threats were by any stretch of the imagination completely beyond the farking pale. I can only condemn that shiat in the harshest-possible language. That said, wonderful. Said click-baiting farkfaces are now going to fuel an entire new wave of anti-video game sentiment, and make us all look even worse than this shiat originally held in the first place.

the_sidewinder:scottydoesntknow: Meh, to me they (mostly) redeemed themselves with the Citadel DLC. It was the ending everyone wanted, but not the ending they could deliver with the original product.

It wasn't the one I wanted. I loved the Citadel DLC, but the actual ending ignored the entire premise of the first game in the franchise. I did get upset about the ending, even more so that I really should have. Perhaps it was because I so enjoyed the first two games, and hell, I really really liked ME3 up until the ending (and I also really like the DLC, even the less popular ones like Omega, since I had also read through the comic books related to that DLC, before the DLC was ever even announced)

Never once, however, did I ever feel the need to threaten anyone at all about the ending, it just never occurred to me that it would A) get any sort of positive change; B) seem like something a decent human being should ever do, especially for some so trivial as a piece of entertainment (that kept me very entertained) or C) open a meaningful dialog with the writers so that they would understand why I was upset about the ending and what kind of details people in the community such as myself like in these stories, and what we didn't

Threatening people, their families, their friends, it just makes no sense at all. It'll more likely cause the end of a beloved franchise than have a positive effect of future iterations

/Oh, and if you are wondering what the pet peeve detail was that had me upset, it was that there was an AI that controlled all the Reapers living on the Citadel itself, yet was incapable of noticing that some Protheans had gotten onto the Citadel after their extinction event and messed with the Keepers so that the Citadel Relay would not open up and let the Reapers through. This AI was also seemingly incapable of signaling the Reapers that it was once again time to harvest life, and so Sovereign was left as a Vanguard, that could interface with the Citadel to open the Relay, wh ...

This thisity this as far as for what was wrong with the end of ME3, but like you I enjoyed the game up to that point and especially the Citadel DLC.

As far as the death threats bit, this is why we can't have nice things and why nerds/geeks/gamers sometimes get a bad rep. I was disappointed in DA 2 as well, but goddamn, death threats and threatening family members of writers is both uncalled for and dumb as hell.

CRtwenty:I'm pretty much done with Dragon Age after II though. It was way too rushed and killed my desire for the series.

DA2 is what would happen if Two Worlds had been an entry in the Elder Scrolls series instead of its own game. It's not that Two World is terrible, and at a sale price on Steam it's worth playing, but by comparison to the ES series it's just completely on a different, much lower, level.

DA2 is like that. If if had been it's own game it might have been "okay", but having that comparison to the original game just ruined it completely.

red5ish:That game should have won an award for something but not best FPS. Is 'ambiance' a category? That game had a unique ambiance.

I thought the artistic vision in the game was incredible. However, I also thought they did nothing mechanically to complement that narrative, shooting being the least of the worries. I kept playing the game and thinking how wonderful a Dishonored-style morality system would be, where a non-lethal playthrough keeps the setpieces bustling and a lethal playthrough turns the place into a vacant mess. Because, quite frankly, the game never provided a proper motivation for me (rather than my character) to kill everyone in sight.

that bosnian sniper:That said, wonderful. Said click-baiting farkfaces are now going to fuel an entire new wave of anti-video game sentiment, and make us all look even worse than this shiat originally held in the first place.

I get the impression this is the end result of creating a user base that most of the players in this new generation simply never learned how to play games, and rather than focusing on the systems and interactivity that make it great, have to push their own pet peeves into video games in order to make a cogent statement about them. The Dragon's Crown Polygon review being a perfect example, because rather than pay someone who actually has experience with belt scrollers to review the thing (and I've heard it's actually a damn fine one at that), find someone who wants to make a statement about gender depiction.

However, imagine the type of person who would make threats like that over a video game. Imagine what he looks like, picture the velcro knee brace and the 12-months-a-year shorts, and the moobs and the heavy breathing.

Now imagine this guy actually posing any kind of menace to anyone. It's kind of funny, right?

Can't say as I've ever had the urge to kill someone's children, for any reason(even including how annoying said children may be). That said, I frequently get the urge to do horrific things to those who threaten or actually harm children.

Video games are interactive entertainment enjoyed by people who are primed, by the nature of the thing, to interact. You are going to get a lot more feedback, shielded by anonymity, and some of it can be ugly. When you launch a sequel there is going to be an even greater response, especially if you turn out a stinker. I do not condone this type of creepy behavior but realistically you have to expect some negative feedback when you sell a POS for $70 after hyping the product like a blockbuster movie.

Hepler left Bioware, according to Hepler, for family reasons. She has an infant child. But Metro sort of left that part of the story out in favor of sensationalism.

FrancoFile:I have never felt the urge to kill someone's children.I have never felt the urge to threaten to kill someone's children.I have never even felt the urge to joke about threatening to kill someone's children.

What the fark is wrong with you people? Red Sox fans are like Jane Austen characters compared to you.

I honestly don't get that criticism. DA1 has you being basically a Nights Watch and you hunt down a big black mean dragon. It wasn't exactly a strong fantasy game when it came to the writing. DA2 has you centred around a city broiling over with civil war between mages and the temple and fleshes out the Qunari instead of DA1's large grey angry humans.

DA1 was fine as a first foray into world building but the story of DA2 was a lot richer than the warmed over plot of DA1.

I agree that the story had potential, but you were punished if you tried to actually develop a character with some personality like you could in Mass Effect. On my first play through I was a mage, sympathetic to the plight of the oppressed mages. And sure, the first mage I helped went bad, but the next one... was also bad. But the next one! He also became a demon and ate his family. But those were just 3 isolated incidents. As a whole, the mages still deserved freedom, because this next one... also turned to pure evil. Okay. I'm certain the next one GOD DAMMIT SO MUCH. No shades of grey, except for the skin of the large angry humans.

Mike_LowELL:Oh, and just to add into the discussion: It's not that video game players are whiny, outraged, immature, entitled elitists. It's that they're one of the few demographics with an actual farking backbone.The problem is that the megapublishers wanted this kind of irrational behavior--buying games before the reviews come out, buying them in droves for sixty bucks, working them into a frenzy for every pedantic detail--and they're now mad that they have to deal with irrational behavior that's a detriment to their business. Don't throw the gator meat and then biatch the gator came after you.

If they had a backbone they'd stop falling for PR nonsense and instead of sending death threats would just maybe decide to stop buying a product when they feel the company isn't releasing a quality product. Otherwise you might as well add dumb and gullible to the whiny, outraged, immature elitist. I've paid for products significantly more expensive than a video game, and when they don't work as advertised I don't send a death threat to an employee, because that's retarded.

I play on some TF2 servers, and without fail there's always a group of players who are whiny, offensive and just ruin the game with their chatter and voicespam. Lately I've been turing off voicechat and hiding the textbox. Makes playing the game enjoyable again.

Lumbar Puncture:If they had a backbone they'd stop falling for PR nonsense and instead of sending death threats would just maybe decide to stop buying a product when they feel the company isn't releasing a quality product. Otherwise you might as well add dumb and gullible to the whiny, outraged, immature elitist.

Mike_LowELL:red5ish: That game should have won an award for something but not best FPS. Is 'ambiance' a category? That game had a unique ambiance.

I thought the artistic vision in the game was incredible. However, I also thought they did nothing mechanically to complement that narrative, shooting being the least of the worries. I kept playing the game and thinking how wonderful a Dishonored-style morality system would be, where a non-lethal playthrough keeps the setpieces bustling and a lethal playthrough turns the place into a vacant mess. Because, quite frankly, the game never provided a proper motivation for me (rather than my character) to kill everyone in sight.

I think BioShock may represent an important milestone in game design, parts of it - the ambiance, the environment, concept - were very strong, but it seems to me to be a transitional achievement, uneven game play, failure to engage the player, but promising of great things to come. I imagine the team had some really bright stars working with some fairly pedestrian direction.

lordargent:FrancoFile: I have never felt the urge to kill someone's children.

Even the really annoying bratty shiathead scumbag children?

// Because there's a few times where I felt that an entire family needed to be erased, from the top to the bottom.

The worst I've every been is to want to stuff a sock into a child's mouth and wrap it up with duct tape.Mom and Dad, on the other hand...(really, you had to lie about your child's age so you could take them on a transatlantic flight without buying a seat, where they proceeded to kick me every 20 minutes all the way from Detroit to Amsterdam)

If you get a couple hundred of them, all it takes is one of them to be unbalanced enough to act. The former head of Xbox Live enforcement had people call in fake hostage situations so that the SWAT team would go to his house.

I honestly don't get that criticism. DA1 has you being basically a Nights Watch and you hunt down a big black mean dragon. It wasn't exactly a strong fantasy game when it came to the writing. DA2 has you centred around a city broiling over with civil war between mages and the temple and fleshes out the Qunari instead of DA1's large grey angry humans.

DA1 was fine as a first foray into world building but the story of DA2 was a lot richer than the warmed over plot of DA1.

I agree that the story had potential, but you were punished if you tried to actually develop a character with some personality like you could in Mass Effect. On my first play through I was a mage, sympathetic to the plight of the oppressed mages. And sure, the first mage I helped went bad, but the next one... was also bad. But the next one! He also became a demon and ate his family. But those were just 3 isolated incidents. As a whole, the mages still deserved freedom, because this next one... also turned to pure evil. Okay. I'm certain the next one GOD DAMMIT SO MUCH. No shades of grey, except for the skin of the large angry humans.

I could follow that line of thinking. My main gripe with ME was actually about the illusion of choice they often have you with very few real choices making a lasting impact on plot. Often times you'd end up in the same place plot wise with a character swap (Wrex/Wreav, Ashley/Kaidan) and while the choices were a plenty very few seemed to have a unique impact.

I thoroughly enjoyed the Mage plot line though and I think they had so many turn and cause evil acts, become possessed by demons or holy spirits to show the fickleness of a Mage and their will in the long run. If mages we all come across can fight off their desire for strength and power and to enforce their will on others I doubt the DA world would be as it is with Templars oppressing them. I think it's a natural inclination to be sympathetic to mages and their plight but even old lady Wynne gets possessed by some Holy Spirit and we all see how that plays out for Anders.

I feel we're hard wired to be sympathetic to oppressed and to see a good side/bad side when this narrative is given but with all the evidence of the game laid bare how many actually think to agree that mages are that threatening?

Mike_LowELL:I get the impression this is the end result of creating a user base that most of the players in this new generation simply never learned how to play games, and rather than focusing on the systems and interactivity that make it great, have to push their own pet peeves into video games in order to make a cogent statement about them.

Well, I think the true laughable irony in all this, is Hepler's comments that served as the flashpoint for this entire shiatstorm are things gamers in the community already complained about, ad nauseum. What was the biggest complaint about the Big Three shooters of last generation (Halo, CoD, GoW)? Repetitive, copy-pasted, filler-content combat scenes that provided no substantive addition to the game save pad hours-played, that everyone who played the games wished they could have skipped, or the designers had simply omitted. Her shiatty writing, offensive primarily to BioWare's most zealous (and batshiat insane) fans, was just the powder keg.

Like it or not, she had a point in that most "action" content in games nowadays is filler bullshiat that simply isn't fun. That wasn't directly her point (which was "I suck at video games, and therefore I should be allowed to skip at what I suck"), but truth in it there still was. That does strike to the heart of the systems in question and interactivity, but it's not a matter of whether gamers ever "really" learned to play games; it's a matter of whether gamers as a community are capable of critical thought, and putting that critical thought to proper use assigning blame where it's due, asserting themselves via civil but strong articulated arguments, and ultimately speaking with their wallets instead of mindlessly consuming and enabling shiatty devs and publishers.

Pocket Ninja:I've never played this game and doubt I ever will. But were the changes made really so utterly profound that they could destroy some troglodyte's enjoyment of it?

No.Dragon Age 2 was an OK-to-mildly-good game that had the misfortune of being the sequel to a far superior title. So there was lots of RRRRRAAAAAAAAGE from the basement-dweller crowd.

RoyFokker'sGhost:BW now is just EA milking the corpse and rushing out games they have no intention of putting any sort of quality or development into. See: Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 3, The Old Republic.

The quality has diminished somewhat since BioWare's independent era, that's true. It seems to be the fashion to say the company is complete crap, but that's an oversimplification that I think has become a meme because EA itself is generally a bunch of duplicitous highwaymen.

DA2 was eh.Mass Effect 3 was farking awesome in every way except for the original ending.SW:TOR is reasonably good, although they sure did screw the pooch with the free-to-play scheme.

Dafatone:The writing (and combat system) of DA2 were the only good parts. I've seen references to how she "ruined" the game. But wasn't the game ruined by its being rushed, which led to repeated environments 9000 times over?

Am I missing something as to what "writing" entails? The ending was fantastic and I did not see it coming at all, especially after playing DA:Awakening.

/obviously, these people are the worst, no matter what Hepler did or didn't do.

I beg to differ on the writing. Things like Anders turning into a mass murderer, and the ending (everybody turns into an evil shiathead, no matter what), and the fact that what your character did changes not a damn thing...nope, story writing sucked. Individual "moments", and most character stuff was good...but not the story.

DenisBergkamp:I could follow that line of thinking. My main gripe with ME was actually about the illusion of choice they often have you with very few real choices making a lasting impact on plot. Often times you'd end up in the same place plot wise with a character swap (Wrex/Wreav, Ashley/Kaidan) and while the choices were a plenty very few seemed to have a unique impact.

I think that's a salient criticism, though I still enjoyed it (and enjoyed games like Walking Dead where there's a lot of "illusory" choice that still really affects the headspace the game puts you in).

As far as video games with choice and branching plot-paths are concerned, there are a lot of tradeoffs to be made, because of the resources required to depict the results of all your possible choices. Most of the time, a game with greater true freedom in plot choices will necessarily be shorter and/or with lower production values. It's all in what you the gamer are personally looking for.

Because the resources required to hunt down some pimple-faced fatass hiding in his parent's basement aren't justified?

Things like this make me seriously reconsider my opposition to game companies that want people to use their real names, though.

Why would anyone use their real name on the internet and why would any company want anyone to?

Blizzard tried doing that to cut back on Forum/Game douchebaggery with their Real ID plan.

Until they started to post personal stuff on Blizzard employees like Mike Morhaime and his wife, and Bashiok.

But in Bashiok's case, he was the one that disclosed his own name publicly as an example that everyone was exaggerating, and then the forums went ahead and ran with it and found a poor sap in another part of CA and started to harass him thinking it was actually Bashiok.

red5ish:I think BioShock may represent an important milestone in game design, parts of it - the ambiance, the environment, concept - were very strong, but it seems to me to be a transitional achievement, uneven game play, failure to engage the player, but promising of great things to come. I imagine the team had some really bright stars working with some fairly pedestrian direction.

The question is whether or not there's the will at the large companies to create a smart, intelligent game which can leverage those resources. You've got all these companies throwing around hundreds of millions of dollars and nobody seems interested in using that money to recreate the lessons of a System Shock, or a Deus Ex, or the original Fallout games. We'll see. Assuming the floor comes out on the modern shooter (and the DotA game takes its place) and console video games lose their cash cow, there's a very good chance the larger companies may just say "fark it" and start giving their creators more leverage to fulfill their desires.

that bosnian sniper:Like it or not, she had a point in that most "action" content in games nowadays is filler bullshiat that simply isn't fun.

Concurred. Unfortunately, the irony in this is that the movement towards filler began when companies needed a way to pad the length of a game without frustrating the larger audiences who were turned off by difficulty. Going back to the original model for "game length" (where you died a ton of times) would only make games more exclusive and do less to interest the audiences which are on the fringe about games.

that bosnian sniper:but it's not a matter of whether gamers ever "really" learned to play games

When I said that, I was referring to the kind of topics that get put forward in the discourse, at least as it applies to game journalism. Hence, everyone is running around blaming video game players for being entitled chauvinists, rather than honing the skills necessary to provide razor-sharp criticism for the games themselves. (Hence the Dragon's Crown fiasco.)

that bosnian sniper:it's a matter of whether gamers as a community are capable of critical thought, and putting that critical thought to proper use assigning blame where it's due, asserting themselves via civil but strong articulated arguments, and ultimately speaking with their wallets instead of mindlessly consuming and enabling shiatty devs and publishers.

I wish. They're vocal, but being vocal is only one part of the battle.

SN1987a goes boom:cgraves67: The people who did this are sick. A poorly received video game does not warrant death threats.

True, the people who made that game should feel bad enough about it to kill themselves without outside intervention.

Agreed, anything below an 80 Metacritic average should be considered a dishonor on the family of all those involved, with ritualistic suicide the only way to cleanse such a stain upon their honor. It's the only way to make sure mediocre video games don't get made.

lordargent:FrancoFile: I have never felt the urge to kill someone's children.

Even the really annoying bratty shiathead scumbag children?

// Because there's a few times where I felt that an entire family needed to be erased, from the top to the bottom.

I could never advocate the death of a child.

I do, however, believe that some need to be forcibly enrolled into a harsh reconditioning program, and the parents who so thoroughly farked them up be made to play catch with randomly exploding satchels of C4.

scottydoesntknow:Pocket Ninja: I've never played this game and doubt I ever will. But were the changes made really so utterly profound that they could destroy some troglodyte's enjoyment of it?

If it had been a standalone game with nothing preceeding it, it would've been fine. What they did was take a fantastic first installment, remove everything about it that made it fantastic, and slap a 2 on it.

It was a rush job by BioWare because they weren't counting on how successful the first one would be.

LoneWolf343:scottydoesntknow: Pocket Ninja: I've never played this game and doubt I ever will. But were the changes made really so utterly profound that they could destroy some troglodyte's enjoyment of it?

If it had been a standalone game with nothing preceeding it, it would've been fine. What they did was take a fantastic first installment, remove everything about it that made it fantastic, and slap a 2 on it.

It was a rush job by BioWare because they weren't counting on how successful the first one would be.

Mike_LowELL:Concurred. Unfortunately, the irony in this is that the movement towards filler began when companies needed a way to pad the length of a game without frustrating the larger audiences who were turned off by difficulty. Going back to the original model for "game length" (where you died a ton of times) would only make games more exclusive and do less to interest the audiences which are on the fringe about games.

Honestly, I think that's more emblematic of the rise of the console and the fall of the arcade (with price in between) than it was gamer expectation. Those "original" games as you'd put them were all arcade ports, and designed by people with an arcade mentality. It's rare to find the person who remembers Ninja Gaiden for its much-lauded difficulty was an arcade port(and in that context, its difficulty makes much, much more sense). Moving games away from the arcade and into the home where they were purchased once new at a higher price point, meant developers had to justify that cost which early on meant lots of filler content.

Not that things have changed in the last decade, but that's a matter of publishers being pants-on-head when it comes to budgeting game development.

When I said that, I was referring to the kind of topics that get put forward in the discourse, at least as it applies to game journalism. Hence, everyone is running around blaming video game players for being entitled chauvinists, rather than honing the skills necessary to provide razor-sharp criticism for the games themselves. (Hence the Dragon's Crown fiasco.)

There's a point to be made when it comes to that sort of thing, though you're right in that it's distinct from the quality of game play. In regards to the former rather than the latter, not to sound xenophobic but you'll notice the overwhelming majority of this sexist stuff comes straight from Japan. That's by no stretch of the imagination limited to video games, look at anime and manga as well. Critics of this crap would be devoting their time and resources to criticizing the seedier and misogynistic aspects of Japanese culture, and not any particular genre through which that culture bleeds.

"http://www.fark.com/comments/7892043/85962246#c8 5962246">Mike_LowELL:Oh, and just to add into the discussion: It's not that video game players are whiny, outraged, immature, entitled elitists. It's that they're one of the few demographics with an actual farking backbone. The problem is that the megapublishers wanted this kind of irrational behavior--buying games before the reviews come out, buying them in droves for sixty bucks, working them into a frenzy for every pedantic detail--and they're now mad that they have to deal with irrational behavior that's a detriment to their business. Don't throw the gator meat and then biatch the gator came after you.

That an FPS with some of the worst shooting I've ever been a part of can become the "best FPS of our time"?

The writing in Bioshock: Infinite was definitely better than the actual gameplay, although the gameplay was quite decent, IMHO, excluding the Halo-esque "you can only carry two weapons at once" syndrome. Of course, the writing would win an Oscar if it was a movie.

PoweredByIrony:I agree that the story had potential, but you were punished if you tried to actually develop a character with some personality like you could in Mass Effect. On my first play through I was a mage, sympathetic to the plight of the oppressed mages. And sure, the first mage I helped went bad, but the next one... was also bad. But the next one! He also became a demon and ate his family. But those were just 3 isolated incidents. As a whole, the mages still deserved freedom, because this next one... also turned to pure evil. Okay. I'm certain the next one GOD DAMMIT SO MUCH. No shades of grey, except for the skin of the large angry humans.

I hated that a lot. There was no room for you to even try pushing a grey area in DA2 most of the time. Practically every NPC's opinion was either "Mages are all iniquitous powderkegs who should all get ye olde lobotomies or be enslaved!" or "Mages are all spotless victims who absolutely should be allowed to summon demons whenever they want!", and the game usually pushed you to agree with one of those extremes instead of giving you a "Let's try to simmer the fark down and think rationally" conversation option.

DenisBergkamp:I honestly don't get that criticism. DA1 has you being basically a Nights Watch and you hunt down a big black mean dragon. It wasn't exactly a strong fantasy game when it came to the writing. DA2 has you centred around a city broiling over with civil war between mages and the temple and fleshes out the Qunari instead of DA1's large grey angry humans.

DA1's plot is played very, very straight, but I thought the worldbuilding was fab and really set the stage for the better parts of 2. The codex entries, if you read them (and you seem like the kind of person who would) were engaging.I also liked that there wasn't an alignment/karma system as such, just reactive consequences according to how you handled certain events and how you spoke/dealt with certain characters. It seemed more realistic that way and didn't shoehorn characters into being super-virtuous or super-evil.

the_sidewinder:/Oh, and if you are wondering what the pet peeve detail was that had me upset, it was that there was an AI that controlled all the Reapers living on the Citadel itself, yet was incapable of noticing that some Protheans had gotten onto the Citadel after their extinction event and messed with the Keepers so that the Citadel Relay would not open up and let the Reapers through. This AI was also seemingly incapable of signaling the Reapers that it was once again time to harvest life, and so Sovereign was left as a Vanguard, that could interface with the Citadel to open the Relay, whereas the AI, once again, was seemingly incapable of doing so

that bosnian sniper:Moving games away from the arcade and into the home where they were purchased once new at a higher price point, meant developers had to justify that cost which early on meant lots of filler content.

I do think it's worth mentioning that the decline of the arcade in the West began roughly around the same time as the rise of optical media, brought on by a series of systems credited with bringing "arcade-quality graphics" to the home format. I don't think optical media cannibalized the arcades, so to speak, but the transition from one format to another couldn't have been more diametrically opposed, and it's easy to see how games when from "short and hard" to "long and easy".

that bosnian sniper:There's a point to be made when it comes to that sort of thing, though you're right in that it's distinct from the quality of game play. In regards to the former rather than the latter, not to sound xenophobic but you'll notice the overwhelming majority of this sexist stuff comes straight from Japan. That's by no stretch of the imagination limited to video games, look at anime and manga as well. Critics of this crap would be devoting their time and resources to criticizing the seedier and misogynistic aspects of Japanese culture, and not any particular genre through which that culture bleeds.

I agree. I do think the objectification is a valid grievance, though currently, I'm willing to respect the developer's artistic vision and see who else is willing to do the same. (And yes, it needs to be balanced against objectification in order formats, of which there is plenty of.) The issue is that the debate is focused on a small subset of aesthetic design in video games. People complained about the fact that Peach used her emotions as superpowers in Super Princess Peach, when they should have complained that Nintendo marketed a piss-easy platformer to little girls where you have infinite lives, can take six hits, and heal yourself just about any time you want. In other words, "this is what we think you're capable of when you're not playing with your dolls". It's more complex than its current portrayal.

that bosnian sniper:There's a point to be made when it comes to that sort of thing, though you're right in that it's distinct from the quality of game play. In regards to the former rather than the latter, not to sound xenophobic but you'll notice the overwhelming majority of this sexist stuff comes straight from Japan. That's by no stretch of the imagination limited to video games, look at anime and manga as well. Critics of this crap would be devoting their time and resources to criticizing the seedier and misogynistic aspects of Japanese culture, and not any particular genre through which that culture bleeds.

Japan has a lot of problems with misogyny in media and media fandom, but to place primary blame on them and on Japanese games is simplifying the issue quite a lot. To be sure, chauvinistic stuff from Japan can reinforce the problem here, but plenty of the insane sexist crap that bubbles up in games and among gamers has nothing to do with Japan at all.

Geotpf:The writing in Bioshock: Infinite was definitely better than the actual gameplay, although the gameplay was quite decent, IMHO, excluding the Halo-esque "you can only carry two weapons at once" syndrome.

Like most two-gun games, it's simply easier to pick the most versatile guns. In this case, you pick the two guns with the highest DPS, and unfortunately, you can only carry one Shotgun.

Mike_LowELL:Oh, cool. This devolved into one of those threads where "intelligent mature adults" can't figure out ways to deal with "stupid whiny kids". This is edgy and original.

Pretty much. What's edgier and more original is the solution: Take some damn responsibility for you little rotten crotchfruit's upbringing. That way by the time they are in their teens and away from home (or have a computer in their room) they won't run around being giant dicks.

Besides she's a writer I'd expect her to recognise a work of fiction. Like an average 15 year old is actually going to know how to kill someone when it doesn't involve using a 360 pad.

Dragon Age II was superior to the original in every way possible except the recycled dungeon layout. It's sad that someone would get death threats and have threats made against their children due to some mental midgets having an issue with their work.

I don't disagree with you at all. Though dicks aren't going to go away. I think it's more important for people to realize that the social order has completely changed. The Deus Ex quote put it best: "The basic human need to be watched was once satisfied by God. Now, the same functionality can be replicated with data-mining algorithms." The whole weight of the world can be brought down on anyone at any time. And if you're going to get into the business of any media platform, you're going to take a lot of criticism, regardless of whether it's valid. Our brains never evolved for this kind of feedback cycle, for the amount of feedback you can get at any one time. But everyone has either one of two choices: Deal with it, or get off the grid. And we'll see how long before it becomes inconvenient to do the second one.

HeartBurnKid:Nemo's Brother: I would love to see some of these gamers do hard time.

/This is pretty typical PC Gamer behavior though. It is why it will always be inferior: the gamers themselves.

if Dragon Age 2 were a console game, you'd look pretty dumb. Oh wait, it is.

/if you've ever been on Xbox Live, you know that console gamers are worse than PC gamers could ever be.

Not wanting to start the usual PC vs. Console pissing match, but bullshiat. Both of them contain cesspools of filth. For every whiny 12-year-old on XBL there's some farktard running around Counter-Strike spraying porn images or swastikas while screaming "n*****r lover" into the mic.

Admitting that there's filth on both sides doesn't mean you have to go out and buy a console and make sweet love to it's HDMI port.

Mike_LowELL:Oh, and just to add into the discussion: It's not that video game players are whiny, outraged, immature, entitled elitists. It's that they're one of the few demographics with an actual farking backbone. The problem is that the megapublishers wanted this kind of irrational behavior--buying games before the reviews come out, buying them in droves for sixty bucks, working them into a frenzy for every pedantic detail--and they're now mad that they have to deal with irrational behavior that's a detriment to their business. Don't throw the gator meat and then biatch the gator came after you.

If you want to talk about assholes on console and assholes on PC, there are both. Console gamer assholes tend to be white bread boring trolls. They're the ones who, in 2013, will shoot someone up close in the head with a shotgun or rocket launcher and scream into a mic "I'M RICK JAMES, biatch!"

PC gamer trolls will typically do things that are more off the wall (the one that comes to mind is the guy who sprayed a nude picture tag on a wall and then promptly ambushed all who stopped to gawk). PC trolls are, generally, more creative.

Neither are good, and saying one platform has them and one doesn't is incorrect.

taoistlumberjak:If you want to talk about assholes on console and assholes on PC, there are both. Console gamer assholes tend to be white bread boring trolls. They're the ones who, in 2013, will shoot someone up close in the head with a shotgun or rocket launcher and scream into a mic "I'M RICK JAMES, biatch!"

PC gamer trolls will typically do things that are more off the wall (the one that comes to mind is the guy who sprayed a nude picture tag on a wall and then promptly ambushed all who stopped to gawk). PC trolls are, generally, more creative.

Neither are good, and saying one platform has them and one doesn't is incorrect.

Heh true. The very nature of the PC allows trolls and griefers to get more creative. Whether or not that's a good thing compared to the typical console troll (which doesn't have as many avenues for trolling) depends on your sense of humor.

... I kinda liked DA2. It wasn't as good as the first one, not even close, but it was fairly good for what it was.

The most vitriolic part of the gaming community are children who can't even buy M-rated games themselves and convince/trick their parents into doing so for them. The kids who threaten an RPG writer with death are in the same circle as those who abuse microphone chat in online games, griefers, teamkillers, etc: Bored little shiats with nothing better to do and no parents to teach them how to treat other people, or friends to teach good sportsmanship and how to be social with others. I would not be surprised if some of these death threats came from low-functioning adults, I guess, but I think a majority of adult gamers know better.

Mike_LowELL:I don't disagree with you at all. Though dicks aren't going to go away. I think it's more important for people to realize that the social order has completely changed. The Deus Ex quote put it best: "The basic human need to be watched was once satisfied by God. Now, the same functionality can be replicated with data-mining algorithms." The whole weight of the world can be brought down on anyone at any time. And if you're going to get into the business of any media platform, you're going to take a lot of criticism, regardless of whether it's valid. Our brains never evolved for this kind of feedback cycle, for the amount of feedback you can get at any one time. But everyone has either one of two choices: Deal with it, or get off the grid. And we'll see how long before it becomes inconvenient to do the second one.

It seems even more cowardly to just meekly accept that bogus SWAT-team calls, doxing, death threats, rape threats, hate mail, etc. etc. etc. are par for the course in this "changed social order" and to say that people just need to learn to deal. That seems to me like a pretty wretched social order, and it will get worse if people don't step up and repudiate these deranged shut-ins when they spew their venom.

taoistlumberjak:PC gamer trolls will typically do things that are more off the wall (the one that comes to mind is the guy who sprayed a nude picture tag on a wall and then promptly ambushed all who stopped to gawk). PC trolls are, generally, more creative.

I'm not seeing the problem in this particular example. That guy sounds like a magnificent bastard rackin' up the kills.

I love complaints that bemoaned Hepler's writing and then, in another post, praise the parts of DAO they liked, such as Orzammar.

(Plot twist: Hepler wrote Orzammar. And she wrote DA2 Anders, whose major character developments were outlined by the lead writer and foreshadowed by DA:A in a lot of ways people seem to not want to remember.)

Inchoate:hated that a lot. There was no room for you to even try pushing a grey area in DA2 most of the time. Practically every NPC's opinion was either "Mages are all iniquitous powderkegs who should all get ye olde lobotomies or be enslaved!" or "Mages are all spotless victims who absolutely should be allowed to summon demons whenever they want!", and the game usually pushed you to agree with one of those extremes instead of giving you a "Let's try to simmer the fark down and think rationally" conversation option.

But that was kind of the point. Kirkwall as a powderkeg that was going to explode and Hawke (you) were less the archetypal prime mover of events (that Cassandra assumes you are from the start) and more of a minor influence caught up in events beyond your control. The idea was to sweep up the protagonist in events and deconstruct the typical RPG-fantasy mythology of the conquering hero. For the specific story they wanted to tell - essentially the cataclysmic event that started a war - it's a fine way to go about it.

That said, the encounter design was an F- and the story needed more iteration to fix pacing issues and problems with the ending where gameplay clearly trumped story in a clumsy way. But the game was rushed and its evident they didnt have time to improve either.

tdpatriots12:But that was kind of the point. Kirkwall as a powderkeg that was going to explode and Hawke (you) were less the archetypal prime mover of events (that Cassandra assumes you are from the start) and more of a minor influence caught up in events beyond your control. The idea was to sweep up the protagonist in events and deconstruct the typical RPG-fantasy mythology of the conquering hero. For the specific story they wanted to tell - essentially the cataclysmic event that started a war - it's a fine way to go about it.

I'm okay with that angle on things, and I think it's a pretty interesting storytelling choice.I just remember being immensely frustrated with not even being allowed to try for a middle ground on most of the quests, as if Hawke herself rarely considers that option. That's unusual for RPGs like Dragon Age, and made me feel like I was controlling an idiot among other idiots, not a well-meaning adventurer drowned out by partisan zeal. This made the plot more frustrating than moving.

Inchoate:I hated that a lot. There was no room for you to even try pushing a grey area in DA2 most of the time. Practically every NPC's opinion was either "Mages are all iniquitous powderkegs who should all get ye olde lobotomies or be enslaved!" or "Mages are all spotless victims who absolutely should be allowed to summon demons whenever they want!", and the game usually pushed you to agree with one of those extremes instead of giving you a "Let's try to simmer the fark down and think rationally" conversation option.

You might notice real prejudices are as irrational and black and white to some people. Especially during peaks of persecution. You either join the angry mob, fight the angry mob, or keep quiet.

Inchoate:It seems even more cowardly to just meekly accept that bogus SWAT-team calls, doxing, death threats, rape threats, hate mail, etc. etc. etc. are par for the course in this "changed social order" and to say that people just need to learn to deal. That seems to me like a pretty wretched social order, and it will get worse if people don't step up and repudiate these deranged shut-ins when they spew their venom.

This. None of that should be condoned or considered something to just deal with. Well, except hate mail. Our society might have some growing pains in dealing with adjusting to such instant social media feedback, but the idea that it's either assholes and anarchy or the highway is a depressing thought.

I am in the minority perhaps, but I actually enjoyed DA2 MORE than the original. In part because of the voice acting, and a main character that spoke with with a degree of humor. The changes I would have liked to have seen, say with the maps, didn't exactly come about, but at least you were returning to places again and again, so it didn't bother me over much. I liked the original, but I've played DA2 more often, because of the characters, who I liked more.

For me, the changes worked, and if the story progression stays on that sort of course, I'll deforest pick up the next installment.

Yaknow I agree that DA2 and ME3 (ending) were bad. I just didn't buy the games because of the reaction from those who had. Doing the whole death threats because a game company made a bad game out of a series that should have been a shoe in isn't worth the time and effort to go all stabby. Seems like a lot of work as opposed to just not giving that company money until they have to lay folks off.

J. Frank Parnell:You might notice real prejudices are as irrational and black and white to some people. Especially during peaks of persecution. You either join the angry mob, fight the angry mob, or keep quiet.

I'm well aware of the realism of irrationality (basically the driving engine of the Politics tab), but I'd rather play a game where the choices my hero can make include something other than "follow the zealot crowd to crazytown" or "stfu".

BioWare is typically good at letting you decide how you want your protagonist to react and respond to the world they're placed in, which made DA2 extra disappointing in that regard for me.

Inchoate:That seems to me like a pretty wretched social order, and it will get worse if people don't step up and repudiate these deranged shut-ins when they spew their venom.

Except that as Mike quite correctly states the publishers of video games want their 'fans' to be totally and utterly fanatical about the product(s), they want them out there buying the game, the season pass and everything else they can get long before a review ever comes out. They want them charging around online slagging off the competition. In short they want them rabid and vocal.

Well... they are. EA (and all the others) have got exactly what they want. Vocal and rabid fans with poor impulse control. Bit late to complain about it when the monster you've created turns around and craps on your own front doorstep is it not?

Accountability makes crazy town go away. When people know they face consequences (whether banhammer or police visit, or employer being called, or media attention...) for bad behavior they start to either curb it or be much more cautious about it.

Thinking of that reddit guy who got outted for being a serious creep. Or the guy who anonymously tweeted awful racist shiat in NY, a firefighter who got tracked down and wept like a baby because he was caught. shiat like that is about the only thing that'll make some of these assholes think twice.

Not much else will IMHO because they lack the appropriate empathy for people they can harass at a distance. They don't feel badly about it at all, so attempts to shame or make them aware of how the other person feels is all pretty moot. They're only sorry when they get caught.

Not to say some can't grow up out of it, at least the ones who are kids who do this shiat. But the adults? Lost cause.

Vaneshi:Except that as Mike quite correctly states the publishers of video games want their 'fans' to be totally and utterly fanatical about the product(s), they want them out there buying the game, the season pass and everything else they can get long before a review ever comes out. They want them charging around online slagging off the competition. In short they want them rabid and vocal.

Well... they are. EA (and all the others) have got exactly what they want. Vocal and rabid fans with poor impulse control. Bit late to complain about it when the monster you've created turns around and craps on your own front doorstep is it not?

Erm, quite a lot of pursuits boast vocal and rabid fans with poor impulse control, and quite a lot of corporate interests encourage zealous product loyalty. It's not exclusive to video games. The word is short for "fanatic" for a reason.

Even if the company is meaningfully culpable in stoking the flames of crazy in their fanbase (a pretty dubious assumption), I'm not really sure why that's supposed to excuse vicious personal threats and other psycho shiat.

I know over-the-top personal insults are de rigueur in a lot of nerdier parts of the internet. Sure, fine. They cease being so wacky and hyperbolic and ironic when you send them to someone who's not in on the "joke", and people who don't realize that are either sociopaths or have spent too much time in a toxic environment.

FrancoFile:I have never felt the urge to kill someone's children.I have never felt the urge to threaten to kill someone's children.I have never even felt the urge to joke about threatening to kill someone's children.

What the fark is wrong with you people? Red Sox fans are like Jane Austen characters compared to you.

I'm guessing that the threatening is being done by teens and preteens.If you have ever played online multiplayer with voice, the biggest assholes are always pre-puberty.

No it won't. Because creating personas online is retardedly simple, you can even layer it all up and use VPN's and proxies to appear to be from another country. And lets be clear here Anonymous will release a tool that can do just that the second someone tries to shut down the lulz.

But in reality it isn't these people that is the problem. It's the fact that the companies involved do actually whip their fans in to a frenzy, everything has to be bigger better nastier than before. They've spent years training those self same people to have exceptionally poor impulse control when it comes to things. Hell you can easily expand that out of videogames and into the way media in general hammers home the message of "don't think, do it NOW!" so we shouldn't be surprised when chunks of our societies just wander off and do something quite... odd or annoying.

Perhaps there is a price to pay for the unrelenting hard sell?

I'd also point out that none of the three you mentioned weren't particularly internet savvy and left a very easy to follow trail with very large signposts. Someone who actually put the effort in would be far far harder to track back.

But as was said in the days of BBS's "Anyone who takes words on their screen serious is probably someone you need to keep an eye on." and it's still true today.

Inchoate:Even if the company is meaningfully culpable in stoking the flames of crazy in their fanbase (a pretty dubious assumption), I'm not really sure why that's supposed to excuse vicious personal threats and other psycho shiat.

Because frankly you can't have one without the other. The flipside of not giving your trained wallets exactly what they want, when they want (even if that is someones head on a metaphorical pike) is.... this. If you don't want this then you can't fan the flames of crazy and train them to be so impulsive.

And whilst I am fully aware that over companies outside of videogames do the exact same thing, I figured I'd try to keep at least somewhat on topic and related to videogames.

MindStalker:I guess Hollywood actors/screenwriter also get this kind of abuse as well? But seriously, WTF is wrong with people. My daughter wants to go into video game creation when she grows up, this kind of shiat worries me.

Just teach her not to work for a company that is claiming to be selling heaven when all they have for sale is a time share in the seedy part of Chulman.

If the marketing department talks a sequel up like it would be like the second coming of Jesus, then the fanatics will start rioting when it turns out they were talking about the gardener.

/Creating emotional investment only pays when you can deliver//Otherwise you get anger///Blah blah blah dark side.

MindStalker:I guess Hollywood actors/screenwriter also get this kind of abuse as well?

Unfortunately yes. Malcolm McDowell received death threats because he "killed Kirk" which prompted him to outright state he wanted nothing to do with the whole franchise ever again (and I don't believe he ever has).

Even authors have been on the receiving end as they killed someone's favourite character or were perceived to not be writing that character correctly.

So whilst I lay the majority of the blame for it happening at the doors of the media companies themselves your daughter will have to accept that if she becomes well known and has a fan following... some of them may well be ever so slightly unhinged.

The vast majority of those are harmless nutters though. This was always the case though.

Jennifer Helper has contacted us to make it clear that she did not leave BioWare as a direct result of the harassment she received at the hands of gamers.

'BioWare was tremendously supportive of me during that time, and I have experienced nothing like it since, due to the excellent policing of the BioWare Forums and new policies on the BioWare Social Network,' she told us in an email.

'I am moving on from BioWare now to pursue other opportunities that let me return to be closer to family in the United States after a wonderful eight years in Canada. I have no intentions to leave the game industry - I love the work that I have done and the reactions from the vast majority of fans and look forward to continuing that work in other venues.'

FrancoFile:I have never felt the urge to kill someone's children.I have never felt the urge to threaten to kill someone's children.I have never even felt the urge to joke about threatening to kill someone's children.

What the fark is wrong with you people? Red Sox fans are like Jane Austen characters compared to you.

The child of the parents of Ariel Castro should die, and if I had the means and opportunity, I would force the child of the parents of Ariel Castro to be chained in a dark basement in Cleveland and slowly tortured to death.

I didn't find it bad at all. But i'm probably the only one who didn't play the original, so have nothing to compare it to.

Never played DA2.

Original was really, really good. Way too long, mages are OP (I played as a mage who specialized in casting AOE spells on my current location since I'd always get rushed), and there are a few mods that you just HAVE to have (Skip the Fade and Respec to name 2), but I enjoyed it a lot. It's probably the best example of how to have a linear story where you feel like you're having an effect on the world.

/I think it's on Steam for $20.//And while everyone rags on the Deep Roads I somewhat enjoyed them (They were long, but at least I could talk to party members), and despised the Fade.

Inchoate:the_sidewinder: /Oh, and if you are wondering what the pet peeve detail was that had me upset, it was that there was an AI that controlled all the Reapers living on the Citadel itself, yet was incapable of noticing that some Protheans had gotten onto the Citadel after their extinction event and messed with the Keepers so that the Citadel Relay would not open up and let the Reapers through. This AI was also seemingly incapable of signaling the Reapers that it was once again time to harvest life, and so Sovereign was left as a Vanguard, that could interface with the Citadel to open the Relay, whereas the AI, once again, was seemingly incapable of doing so

I hadn't thought of that. Good point.

Also consider that the Catalyst tells you that organics and synthetics can never, never, never work alongside one another because they will always war. It of course did not want to hear your rational debate about the best outcome on Rannoch since it just knows better. Yeah, that's the ticket!

Cookbook's Anarchist:Also consider that the Catalyst tells you that organics and synthetics can never, never, never work alongside one another because they will always war. It of course did not want to hear your rational debate about the best outcome on Rannoch since it just knows better. Yeah, that's the ticket!

If I remember Catalyst also intimates it is in direct control of the Reapers. At the very least the best possible outcome is "Insert Citadel in to Sol" thus destroying the Reapers whole command & control system, keeping the Relays operational AND if you do coax the Leviathans in to action then the Reapers suddenly become quite... powerless. As a single Leviathan ball seems to be able to shut down a whole Reaper and whatever it happens to be carrying as cargo (Husks, etc.), so charge in to the final battle and chuck a few of those out the airlock.

Vaneshi:Inchoate: Even if the company is meaningfully culpable in stoking the flames of crazy in their fanbase (a pretty dubious assumption), I'm not really sure why that's supposed to excuse vicious personal threats and other psycho shiat.

Because frankly you can't have one without the other. The flipside of not giving your trained wallets exactly what they want, when they want (even if that is someones head on a metaphorical pike) is.... this. If you don't want this then you can't fan the flames of crazy and train them to be so impulsive.

And whilst I am fully aware that over companies outside of videogames do the exact same thing, I figured I'd try to keep at least somewhat on topic and related to videogames.

Those video game companies shouldn't dress so sexy because they're just encouraging people with low impulse control to do something.

I didn't find it bad at all. But i'm probably the only one who didn't play the original, so have nothing to compare it to.

Dragons Age one was actually really really good if you havent played anything else related to it. It was one of those suprieses for everybody (even the devs). Yes "The Fade" was long and boring but the rest of it was suprisingly deep, well written and damn fun action. Spending the first half of the game against one antagonist, winning against him and then choosing to MAKE HIM YOUR shield biatch for the second half......that was worth $50 right there. Oh and if you want later, hey ultimate asshole shield biatch, go fark this witch for me, just shut up and do it. Yea that could happen. It was probably one of the most solid RPG's ever made, for me thats a bold statement.

Then they made DA2, and spit in our eye. When you played DA1 and then played DA2, you wonder what the fark went wrong.This ladyis not entirely to blame for what happend to that and the other franchise. But she was part of the problem.

/not sad to see her go//hope whoever threatened her kids gets run over by a bus full of cancer.

scottydoesntknow:HeartBurnKid: Nemo's Brother: I would love to see some of these gamers do hard time.

/This is pretty typical PC Gamer behavior though. It is why it will always be inferior: the gamers themselves.

if Dragon Age 2 were a console game, you'd look pretty dumb. Oh wait, it is.

/if you've ever been on Xbox Live, you know that console gamers are worse than PC gamers could ever be.

Not wanting to start the usual PC vs. Console pissing match, but bullshiat. Both of them contain cesspools of filth. For every whiny 12-year-old on XBL there's some farktard running around Counter-Strike spraying porn images or swastikas while screaming "n*****r lover" into the mic.

Admitting that there's filth on both sides doesn't mean you have to go out and buy a console and make sweet love to it's HDMI port.

You realize I was replying to somebody who wanted to put every negative gamer behavior on PC gamers and PC gamers only, right? I mean, maybe I went a bit far to the other side, but I'm not the guy who decided that all of this bullshiat came from only one type of gamer based on nothing more than his own warped prejudices.

Lumbar Puncture:Vaneshi: Inchoate: Even if the company is meaningfully culpable in stoking the flames of crazy in their fanbase (a pretty dubious assumption), I'm not really sure why that's supposed to excuse vicious personal threats and other psycho shiat.

Because frankly you can't have one without the other. The flipside of not giving your trained wallets exactly what they want, when they want (even if that is someones head on a metaphorical pike) is.... this. If you don't want this then you can't fan the flames of crazy and train them to be so impulsive.

And whilst I am fully aware that over companies outside of videogames do the exact same thing, I figured I'd try to keep at least somewhat on topic and related to videogames.

Those video game companies shouldn't dress so sexy because they're just encouraging people with low impulse control to do something.

And yes I realize I was suggesting an association fallacy, but it is kind of absurd to suggest a correlation between companies marketing towards ignorance/gullibility to consumers irrational behavior.

Vaneshi:But in reality it isn't these people that is the problem. It's the fact that the companies involved do actually whip their fans in to a frenzy, everything has to be bigger better nastier than before.

Nah, I don't think that's true at all. Because you get the exact same homophobic, misogynistic, bile-filled, rape and death threats from anime, and Reddit, and sports.

Basically, you get this crap wherever large groups of males (of any age, it's not just teenagers) virtually gather and decide they have a "man space" and no queers or chicks are allowed in their man space. They might get cooties, or something. A lot of them actually do clearly loathe women and gays. Actually hate them.

I think it's partly because these guys otherwise feel powerless and unnecessary and are trying to assert some control by regressing into some sort of warped ideal of masculinity.

if_i_really_have_to:Vaneshi: But in reality it isn't these people that is the problem. It's the fact that the companies involved do actually whip their fans in to a frenzy, everything has to be bigger better nastier than before.

Nah, I don't think that's true at all. Because you get the exact same homophobic, misogynistic, bile-filled, rape and death threats from anime, and Reddit, and sports.

Basically, you get this crap wherever large groups of males (of any age, it's not just teenagers) virtually gather and decide they have a "man space" and no queers or chicks are allowed in their man space. They might get cooties, or something. A lot of them actually do clearly loathe women and gays. Actually hate them.

I think it's partly because these guys otherwise feel powerless and unnecessary and are trying to assert some control by regressing into some sort of warped ideal of masculinity.

They are powerless and unecessary - it isn't just a feeling. There are way too many young males in the world today - especially in Asia and the Middle east. We need a big, low concept, cannon fodder war to kill off about a half billion of them.

orclover:Then they made DA2, and spit in our eye. When you played DA1 and then played DA2, you wonder what the fark went wrong.

This. DA1 had plenty of flaws, but did a good job allowing you to customize and play out the personality of your character. Then DA2 came around, forced you to play one specific character with a personality already mostly defined by the developers and a removal of a lot of the freedom that made DA1 so fun.

The plot also became very "grimdark" (to borrow a line from Games Workshop). DA1 had been pretty gritty, but it felt very realistic in terms of the world building and characters. DA2 felt more like a caricature of the first. Like Bioware realized that people had liked the grim bits of DA1 and decided to focus exclusively on that. The fact that most of the game came down to deciding whether to ally yourself with a bunch of insane demon summoning mages, or insane mass murdering knights really didn't help matters.

Your other party members weren't that great either. Especially since half of them wound up being gay for no clear reason. I don't have any issues with gay characters in video games, but making a character gay just to let you use the same romantic cutscenes with different gendered main characters is lazy.

And I still won't accept what they did to Anders. They removed almost all of the traits that made him fun in DA1 and replaced it with emo rage. I had no problem with his motivation and hatred of the chantry, but I missed how snarky he was about it. It was like watching an old episode of Adam West Batman only to get Christian Bale Batman instead. Technically it's the same character, but there's barely any similiarities.

Jennifer Helper has contacted us to make it clear that she did not leave BioWare as a direct result of the harassment she received at the hands of gamers.

'BioWare was tremendously supportive of me during that time, and I have experienced nothing like it since, due to the excellent policing of the BioWare Forums and new policies on the BioWare Social Network,' she told us in an email.

'I am moving on from BioWare now to pursue other opportunities that let me return to be closer to family in the United States after a wonderful eight years in Canada. I have no intentions to leave the game industry - I love the work that I have done and the reactions from the vast majority of fans and look forward to continuing that work in other venues.'

Lol so it wasn't anything at all. Awesome job author/subby

Or, this could all just be PR talk. Saving face, saving company's face, etc etc etc

I like DA1 much, much more than DA2, which felt way too gimicky to me. It felt more like I was watching a game than playing one, if that makes any sense.

Jennifer Helper has contacted us to make it clear that she did not leave BioWare as a direct result of the harassment she received at the hands of gamers.

'BioWare was tremendously supportive of me during that time, and I have experienced nothing like it since, due to the excellent policing of the BioWare Forums and new policies on the BioWare Social Network,' she told us in an email.

'I am moving on from BioWare now to pursue other opportunities that let me return to be closer to family in the United States after a wonderful eight years in Canada. I have no intentions to leave the game industry - I love the work that I have done and the reactions from the vast majority of fans and look forward to continuing that work in other venues.'

Lol so it wasn't anything at all. Awesome job author/subby

Or, this could all just be PR talk. Saving face, saving company's face, etc etc etc

I like DA1 much, much more than DA2, which felt way too gimicky to me. It felt more like I was watching a game than playing one, if that makes any sense.

It's not PR talk, Jennifer asked the Metro guys to fix the story herself.The short version of why she quit is basically: her husband got laid off and ended up landing a very good job in the USA so they decided to move down there.

I'm friends with a bunch of her friends and my facebook page was amusingly filled with that info today.

Jennifer Helper has contacted us to make it clear that she did not leave BioWare as a direct result of the harassment she received at the hands of gamers.

'BioWare was tremendously supportive of me during that time, and I have experienced nothing like it since, due to the excellent policing of the BioWare Forums and new policies on the BioWare Social Network,' she told us in an email.

'I am moving on from BioWare now to pursue other opportunities that let me return to be closer to family in the United States after a wonderful eight years in Canada. I have no intentions to leave the game industry - I love the work that I have done and the reactions from the vast majority of fans and look forward to continuing that work in other venues.'

Lol so it wasn't anything at all. Awesome job author/subby

Or, this could all just be PR talk. Saving face, saving company's face, etc etc etc

I like DA1 much, much more than DA2, which felt way too gimicky to me. It felt more like I was watching a game than playing one, if that makes any sense.

It's not PR talk, Jennifer asked the Metro guys to fix the story herself.The short version of why she quit is basically: her husband got laid off and ended up landing a very good job in the USA so they decided to move down there.

I'm friends with a bunch of her friends and my facebook page was amusingly filled with that info today.

studebaker hoch:I'm glad I grew up in an era when the person bullying you was standing right in front of you.

Heh.

/got suspended for 3 days, SO worth it.

A friend of mine was relentlessly bullied in middle school. He was always a little chubby and one particular person made it his life's mission to make my friend miserable every chance he got. Finally, after enduring yet another assault, my friend snapped and beat the holy shiat out of the bully. Then he went to the office crying and turned himself in. He wasn't suspended. The staff knew the other guy was a bully and were actually happy someone had finally stood up to him. They hadn't done anything because they had never caught him in the act, just had numerous complaints.

Vaneshi:Lumbar Puncture: Those video game companies shouldn't dress so sexy because they're just encouraging people with low impulse control to do something.

Nice straw man. But no. I don't see anyone dressing in a provocative manner standing around with a sign saying "Rape me". EA however does.

I admitted it was an ad hominem, but your last part makes my insinuation of victim blaming seem on point instead of a distraction from it. I don't believe that EA's PR has the ability to make people act in an irrational manner, unless the person was so already. Unhappiness with the quality of a product should be a warning to stop buying that product, not continue purchasing it and get even angrier to the point of threatening violence against the creators of that product. EA wants your money, not for you to attack them.

Did the woman write for a crappy game? Yes. Would I, in her shoes, have done what she did? No. Did she deserve death threats with no possible means of reprisal? No.

Were I in her shoes (and I have been on a smaller scale,) I would arm the kids with... whatever she felt comfortable with and let them know that it's probably unlikely but if someone tries to hurt them...

Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get me... but that has never stopped me from doing what's right. If this job was her passion, she should have fought. If it was "just a job"...

RKade:Did the woman write for a crappy game? Yes. Would I, in her shoes, have done what she did? No. Did she deserve death threats with no possible means of reprisal? No.

Were I in her shoes (and I have been on a smaller scale,) I would arm the kids with... whatever she felt comfortable with and let them know that it's probably unlikely but if someone tries to hurt them...

Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get me... but that has never stopped me from doing what's right. If this job was her passion, she should have fought. If it was "just a job"...

She had other reasons for leaving her job, the Fark linked article is actually a kind of misrepresented portion of a better, larger article on Polygon about the subject of death threats against people in the industry.

HotIgneous Intruder:Law enforcement should be involved in the case of death threats serious enough to make the woman quit her job.

While death threats are serious...if you'd bothered to read the farking article, right down there at the bottom it specifically says this happened years ago, and she's leaving to pursue other interests, not from the death threats. BioWare themselves were very careful and helpful with her regarding the threats.

When a game goes wrong there is never any actual chance for a reasonable post mortum, no chance to make suggestions as a player why you think X in design didn't work, you just get people yelling and screaming about how the game destroyed everything they loved and how everyone should just die.

I mean I've complained about games, and I've complained about Bioware games, but keep your vitriol for the game, not any of the people involved.

Granted, this is the internet, so I can't tell which people are actually horrible angry small people and which people post this kind of thing just to inflict emotional distress for the lulz.

I don't recall any history of any pimply faced nerds following through with their threats towards game developers. Just notify law enforcement and let them handle it.

I was pretty pissed when the last Aliens game came out and it sucked huge donkey nut sack due to their overhyping the game while pushing the development onto some turd nobody studio to build while Gearbox started on Badlands 2. I didn't wish death on anyone, but I sure as hell am not giving Gearbox anymore of my money.

Satanus Maximus:I don't recall any history of any pimply faced nerds following through with their threats towards game developers. Just notify law enforcement and let them handle it.

I was pretty pissed when the last Aliens game came out and it sucked huge donkey nut sack due to their overhyping the game while pushing the development onto some turd nobody studio to build while Gearbox started on Badlands 2. I didn't wish death on anyone, but I sure as hell am not giving Gearbox anymore of my money.

I believe it was mentioned in the Polygon article that a former Microsoft guy was getting "swatted" aka people calling swat to his house and even then the police wouldn't do anything. Also consider that many of these games developement studios are in Canada and I don't think it's too much of a stretch to think that most of these dumbass kids are entitled American brats.

Vaneshi:Inchoate: That seems to me like a pretty wretched social order, and it will get worse if people don't step up and repudiate these deranged shut-ins when they spew their venom.

Except that as Mike quite correctly states the publishers of video games want their 'fans' to be totally and utterly fanatical about the product(s), they want them out there buying the game, the season pass and everything else they can get long before a review ever comes out. They want them charging around online slagging off the competition. In short they want them rabid and vocal.

Well... they are. EA (and all the others) have got exactly what they want. Vocal and rabid fans with poor impulse control. Bit late to complain about it when the monster you've created turns around and craps on your own front doorstep is it not?

"It sucks that she got raped, but... I mean, did you see what she was wearing?"

You are officially blaming the victim for the behavior of a community of self-entitled assholes who put a woman and her family through a period of paralyzing fear and anger over a farking game. I don't care if EA came out and said, "We hope you guys get so passionate about this that you make death threats LOL", they don't number mind control among their evil powers. People need to learn that they are responsible for their own farking actions, regardless of the power of PR and marketing.

I worked with Hepler and her husband at BioWare for many years. They're generous, intelligent, hard-working people, like pretty much most game developers are. The fact that they helped make a game for you to play does not give you a right to farking send them death threats OR victim-shame them when they complain about getting death threats.

From some of the combat, it looks like they are trying to make Dragon Age: Skyrim. Fark BiowarEA.If I wanted to play Skyrim, I would just go do that.

The thing is, everyone saw so much potential with Origins, and instead of tweaking those things it needed to make a perfect game, we got a quick cash grab that was total garbage, and now they are like "WE LISTEN 2 DA FANS" and then keep going further and further from what the fans want. The fans didn't want the Witcher or Skyrim, they already have those, they basically wanted a bigger more open world of Origins where your actions effect your characters and story, and they wanted the same Baldur's Gate style to do it.

If you aren't going to give us the baldur's gate style combat, can you at least make it multiplayer so my buddies can take the roles of characters in real time? They might redeem the game a bit, but as of right this second, I'm not paying a dime for this. You can fool me once, you can't fool me twice.

Dafatone:The writing (and combat system) of DA2 were the only good parts. I've seen references to how she "ruined" the game. But wasn't the game ruined by its being rushed, which led to repeated environments 9000 times over?

Am I missing something as to what "writing" entails? The ending was fantastic and I did not see it coming at all, especially after playing DA:Awakening.

/obviously, these people are the worst, no matter what Hepler did or didn't do.

THIS!

While the storyline wasn't as great as DA:O, I still give it a solid C.

The rushed 2 year dev cycle is what killed both DA2 and ME3, blame the penny-pinching MBAs not the team.

You're correct. The internet does need to grow up. And the people who are capable of "growing up" need to recognize that assholes exist on the internet, and that you will have to find ways to deal with them. The entire philosophy of video games is the idea that they present players with challenges and then players are expected to overcome them. Dealing with and marginalizing assholes is one of those challenges, and complaining for the creator or developer of the game to do something is not always the best idea. There are obviously some forms of abuse and behavior which are unacceptable in any format, and you will run into a certain percentage of unacceptable behavior, no matter what you do. Which is why you should spend your energy preparing for it, rather than using that energy to complain to the creator of the game that they're not doing enough to crack down on unacceptable behavior.

DenisBergkamp:Shame about all that though I can't imagine taking the threats of angry nerds serious enough to warrant quitting her job. I would imagine it was less the threats and more her desire to not out up with the negativity of the Internet culture.

I actually liked the direction DA2 was taking combat and for a first step it wasn't great but was enjoyable. I also liked the plot of DA2 a lot more than DA1s magical black dragon adventure. I honestly think most of the backlash was just how rushed the games world was considering it reused every map five times over.

Judging by the title of DA3 it looks like the events of DA2 will play strongly in it and I look forward to playing but not paying for day 1 DLC.

And all the launch day bugs, don't forget that. It was very sloppy work. I pre-ordered it and couldn't play it the first day.

Mike_LowELL:rather than using that energy to complain to the creator of the game that they're not doing enough to crack down on unacceptable behavior.

Maybe I missed it, but I haven't seen anyone blame Bioware for not doing enough to crack down on threats made to employees. I think as online communities evolve then those community should be more proactive to make it understood that behavior isn't acceptable, online or not, instead of condoning it, or just saying "that kind of behavior happens, what can you do" or shifting the blame to the victims.